Apparitions
by discotrucks
Summary: Wilson never quite got over Amber's death. What happens when his conscious creates a dead woman-who died in a similar way to Amber-to help him get over it? What if she's not as much imagination as Wilson thought?
1. The Dream

_**Hi...yeah, I felt like writing this. The whole premise is that Wilson can't get over Amber's death and in his dreams he starts seeing a girl who died in a similar way and helps him get over it. I kind of based the story on the song "Bixby Canyon Bridge" by Death Cab for Cutie, so you may see some lyrics in there. I don't own House MD or any songs in here, so be aware of that!  
**_

_**Please read & review, it would mean a lot to me!**_

_**FutureWriterofAmericaACTIVATE**_

* * *

_I descended a dusty gravel ridge  
beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge  
Until I eventually arrived  
at the place where your soul had died._

* * *

Wilson cleared the hair out of his face, walking down the steep gravel road in the middle of a sweltering heat, batting gnats out of his face. He had been here every day for a month. Every night, when his head hit the pillow, he wound up…here. In the country. Next to farmhouses and apple orchards; the proverbial ghetto to someone like him, who had grown up in the city. He had never even seen an apple tree. So why were they so vivid in his mind's inner eye? Maybe that was something to figure out when he woke up to his own personal hell…

He ventured further down the path, occasionally stopping to brush ferns away from his legs (they felt so real when he touched them!). A small green lizard scuttled away from him. He could just make it out, in the distance, a vast, shimmering river, the rocks strangely golden, the opalescent water frothing benignly. He stared at the water for what felt like hours, glaring at it, _daring _it to try to look more uncaring and cold. It ignored him (Ignored? He was going crazy, rivers are _inanimate_…) and lazily drifted elsewhere. He sighed and looked away, closing his eyes and rubbing them quietly. He opened them again, hoping that his dream would stop repeating itself.

It didn't. He was staring at it, staring at the bus overturned in the wreckage, staring at the twisted metal remains of a vehicle. He blinked, looked away, tried to burn the image from his mind, but no, he _couldn't_, because it was replaced by her bed, her hospital room; in a whirl of color _that _was replaced by her casket, her funeral, her _grave_…

Wilson woke with a start, gasping, wrapped in the sheets she had picked out, sweating fiercely. God damned dream.

* * *

_**I hope you liked it! Please R&R. There will be more.**_

**_FutureWriterofAmericaACTIVATE_**


	2. Something New

_**Hello! Sorry for the wait; I had to do a little searching for some inspiration. Please, R & R!**_

_**This song belongs to the Killers, and Wilson and Amber (or pseudo-Amber) belong to House MD and David Shore etc.**_

* * *

_To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you  
Well I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you  
In a room without a window in the corner I found truth_

_The Killers - Shadowplay_

* * *

Life was as close to his usual routine as possible, only now, in the mornings, instead of kissing Amber with a quick "See you later," before he went to work, he stared at the last letter she had written to him.

_Sorry I'm not here. Went to pick up House._

_Love A_

The words seemed to cause odd discomfort in the back of Wilson's mind; like every time he read them they rubbed his thoughts in the wrong way and caused a rash of the mind, but he couldn't stop reading them. If Wilson didn't read those words, those eleven words, those thirty-six letters and three punctuation marks in her rounded handwriting, his whole being would unravel.

It would mean that he admitted that she was dead.

Therefore, to his already trembling logic, they were imperative to his survival. A brief flicker of thought occurred in the back of his already stressed brain: if there was a way to not grieve properly, this was _it_. It didn't matter. Wilson could still imagine her light eyes, her severe haircut, her triangular jaw, the way her curt smile always seemed to make her eyes light up with a fire he hadn't seen in his whole lifetime. He remembered how the slightest touch from her would light his heart up with a forest fire of the soul, made him feel so incredibly warm and loved that he couldn't _possibly _explain to anyone how the bonfire she released onto his inner being could feel so extraordinary. Her skin made his heart thrum against his chest, threatening to burst his ribcage; in truth he only stopped kissing her when he feared heart attack.

How could she be gone? It felt impossible to him. Life had become an inescapable rock of nothingness since Amber hadn't graced Wilson's household with her warming presence. He hadn't even slept on the bed since she hadn't come home- the couch had sunken in solemnly thanks to his constant presence, something his back reminded him about constantly.

Wilson snatched a bagel from his long since cleaned kitchen countertop and collapsed on the floor, not wanting to be anywhere near the sofa that he spent entirely too much of his time with. He grabbed the remote from the coffee table and hit the only button on the device that he knew by default- the PWR button clicked depressingly under his thumb's pressure. The television turned on slowly, the sound blaring before the image could show up. Static roared through the speakers as the picture clicked onto the screen. The television snowed benignly as he remembered: he had been watching old vhs tapes last night. The mute button was smashed deep down in the plastic molding of the remote as the erratic sound pulsed against his eardrums, making him feel strangely paranoid of someone watching him. Casually, he flipped the station to the news and pressed the mute button again. The cheery female newscaster's voice almost bored a hole in his brain with her incessant chatter about some celebrity scandal, but he gathered the information he needed. It was six in the morning on a Saturday.

Damn. That dream had woken him up _way _too early- he didn't have work until Monday, a rarity for Wilson. He clicked the PWR button again and threw the remote back onto the coffee table, finishing his bagel and collapsing onto the couch. He'd never had that dream twice in the same day; maybe he could get a few hours of sleep. His therapist said sleep was good for him, as long as it wasn't in excess. He vaguely recalled him telling Wilson to sleep more. _Sure_, he thought, _whatever_.

He grasped the blanket he had tossed onto the couch and pulled his pillow resolutely under his head, burying his face in its fuzzy depths. His thoughts were only white noise now, background music for his withering consciousness. He blinked, slowly.

_ One_.

_ Two._

_ Three_.

He was asleep before he could count to four.

The dream was different this time. He wasn't in the country field- he was somewhere else entirely. On a boat? He was at least on the ocean. Its vast cerulean plains spread out before him in mock perfection, the mirror-like surface broken only by random waves coursing through its being like a muscle flex. He didn't like the ocean, though; it scared him. It was too deep, too wild, and too large. He glanced at his feet and almost cried out in fear. There was no boat beneath him- he was standing on the ocean's glassy surface, tempting it to not hold his weight…

Wilson leaned onto the balls of his feet, for some reason hoping that it would make him appear to weigh less.

Something flew out of the water and struck him in the center of his forehead, landing at the base of his feet and laying, suspended, on the water's surface. He picked it up, examining it. A rock of amber. He didn't need a therapist to tell him what that meant. He scowled grimly and tossed the hunk of old sap at the endless water in a futile manner. It skipped on the water. He watched it, counting. One, two, three times it jumped before it made its final contact with the water, collapsing under the weight of the sea. Remorse pulsed in the back of his head- did he just throw amber back into the ocean? _No_, he replied, soothing himself, _I threw a useless chunk of rock into the ocean._

There was a _fwish _of rushing water as something rose from the navy depths beneath him. It was Amber, made of…amber, pure amber, a frown heavy on her features as water cascaded around the frame of her face into the sea.

"Am I useless?" she asked.

"No! No, you're not useless, you're everything, I just don't like amber-"

Her golden scowl said too much for him to go on. She reached out a cracked, yellowed arm, grabbing his wrist, but instead of making him feel incredibly warm her skin made him feel like he had just swallowed liquid nitrogen or dry ice: he thought ice was burning his insides and crunching together uncomfortably, turning into long spikes of uncertainty in the pit of his stomach.

She glared at him with her yellow eyes that were coated in spindly cracks that almost reverberated from her pupils. Her grasp tightened on his wrist, making it go numb with the glacial waves that shot from her fingertips. She began to sink into the ocean, dive under without letting him go. He would've screamed, if it weren't for the water pouring into his mouth.

Wilson fought valiantly to force this pseudo-Amber to release him, but her grip seemed to have fused with the skin on his arm- he felt like it would cause him great pain if he forced her to let go. She dragged him farther and farther down, his lungs screaming for air as each second passed.

His lungs weren't on fire. He didn't know why _any _writer had ever written that about a drowning person's lungs. They weren't on fire; they were in the ninth circle of _hell. _It was as if his lungs were caught in a bear trap – parts of them seemed to be punctured and began to collapse as they emptied of air. He wondered in silence if he would die here – in his dream. Did that mean he'd die in real life? He couldn't stomach the thought.

The pseudo-Amber landed densely at the ocean floor, sending up thick waves of wet sand into the swirling eddies around her. She bent over, grasping something from the thick carpet of sand. The hand holding Wilson's wrist jerked toward her other arm as she deposited whatever she had picked up into his palm. She nodded at him eagerly.

He looked at it cautiously, somehow expecting it to be something threatening. It was the chunk of amber he had thrown into the ocean. He wanted to scream at her. However, he lacked the lung capacity. He liked _Amber_, just not the _amber _amber. Was she stupid? She grasped his wrist more firmly and shoved the rock of amber into his face. It wasn't the same color as most amber; it was a bright, translucent orange…and there was a vicodin pill trapped in its thick, fluorescent depths. He glared at pseudo-Amber in disbelief.

"Is he worth forgetting?" she asked, her words echoing off of nothing, somehow spoken in some way that allowed him to understand her.

They practically flew back to the surface of the water. His lungs breathed in a staccato harmony as the briny sea air overflowed inside of him, decompressing the collapsed parts of his lungs and removing the bear trap's vice grip. The amber chunk was still caught between his fingers like a sandy monster, and pseudo-Amber released her violent hold from his wrist. It made him want to smile, to laugh, to be _happy_, for once in months. He inhaled again, feeling the wondrous motion of air filling his lungs, and silently wondered if there was any way he could possibly make his lungs any larger.

She glared at him stolidly, her lips pursed, when she saw the small smile tugging at the corners of his lips, threatening to explode into a grin. Her expression did not change, but she merely stared at him; the question she had asked only moments earlier still seeming to resonate profoundly in the air or Wilson's thoughts, he didn't know.

Another _fwush _of water sounded as she sank back to the ocean floor resolutely, her eyes still alive with her question as they glared at him.

The truth was, Wilson didn't know if he knew the answer to that question.

* * *

_**Hope you enjoyed it! I'll bring in some other installments later- I was up until one in the morning writing this! **_

_**Disclaimer is above...please R & R? **_

_**Thanks**_

**_FutureWriterofAmericaAVTIVATE_**


	3. A Touch of Poison, a Hint of Loss

_**So yeah. Sorry I took so long, I was uninspired for a while and then my dog (who was older than I was) passed away, so I've been dealing with that too... So whatever, read and review if you want. I don't own House MD, House, Amber, Cuddy, or Wilson. I do own Dr. Frist, though. Feel free to beat him up as you wish.**_

* * *

_I'm sick of shaking  
Never waking  
From the hell I achieve  
I never knew you till you left me  
With the crying disease_

_Blue October- X Amount of Words_

Wilson woke with a start, his chest heaving as it attempted to nurse several stitches in his side. He looked down, startled, and saw only the vague downy depths of his pillow, laced with many saliva stains. He had fallen asleep face down in the suffocating, somewhat appealing pillowcase that Amber had chosen herself- a toffee colored envelope of cotton that he had never quite liked, though he found that he was liking it quite a lot lately. Did his body have no instinct for survival anymore? He could hardly imagine a life with such a defect- would he eventually forget the art of breathing, or would he be more violent to himself, and simply walk in front of a bus someday, his brain unable to stop his body from what it wanted to do most? The latter, although quite unappealing to Wilson, had some form of poeticism about it- for what was more romantic than taking your own life in the way that your lover had died? Of course, it would be nearly impossible for one to engineer a suicide in the same way that _Amber _had died, as bus accidents in no way occurred every day, and there was no way to ensure that it would rupture his kidneys- but the medium would be the same.

He shook his head and got up. The psychiatrist- that godforsaken asshole- had told him that, by any means possible, suicidal thoughts should be avoided. For once, Wilson agreed. Suicide was bad. It did not take Einstein to figure that out.

Wilson found it odd that he had taken such an intense disliking to his psychiatrist; he was a painstakingly normal, almost boring man, much like Wilson himself. In fact, the most bothersome thing about him was his ever expanding waist and his increasing amount of chins; Wilson was quite perturbed by this for two reasons- he did not want to watch the man have a heart attack because he _knew _that he would not resuscitate him no matter _what _the circumstances and he did not want to start over with another psychiatrist.

His phone rang and Wilson let it go to voicemail- who said you had to have manners in your own house? – while he collapsed onto the couch once more. Cuddy's voice rang out, tinny through the minuscule speakers the machine provided.

"Wilson? Wilson, I know you're there. Listen, Dr. Frist called." Damn psychiatrist. Why couldn't he just choke on his Big Mac? "He says you're an hour late. I'm worried. If you don't go in _now_, I'm going to have to let you go. I can't have a doctor that's a potential suicide risk working in my hospital without psychiatric help." So that's what he was now. Potential suicide risk. He almost scoffed at the title. It was like having someone call him Lord Wilson, but with more empathy. "Would you like a seat, Potential Suicide Risk Wilson?" they would ask, and he would reply grandly, with a "No, thank you, I rather think I will contemplate suicide in the _other _chair."

"Wilson? You need to go." Ah, Cuddy. Her heart was always so warm and her car was always so cold. If she could reverse that, they would be driving instead of talking right now. "Wilson! You _know _we're all worried about you. You need to go to Dr. Frist. He'll help."

He could hear the clatter that meant the phone was being lowered into its cradle. His manners overtaking him, he snatched the phone quickly, placing the receiver near his mouth.

"Doesn't matter. I was considering resignation anyway," his voice, surprisingly bass and gravelly, as if unused for a long time (it was) rang out almost vehemently. However, his body, in addition to having no survival instinct, wanted him to be a hypocrite as well, and sat up; grabbed his coat and his car keys. He was out of the door in less than 5 minutes.

He had no taste for personal hygiene anymore.

* * *

"I see you did not brush your hair today…" Dr. Frist did not ask the question as a question, for he was one of those infuriating people in the world who left everything open-ended and strung out for one's own observation.

Wilson had to bite his tongue, as he almost said, "I see you did not stain your lapel with a McGriddle this morning…" Instead, he said, "I was sort of in a rush."

He had never tasted such infuriating sarcasm in his own voice! It frightened him. He supposed Dr. Lard had something to do with it…but he had hated him since the day he had seen his tweed jacket and sweaty brow. What made him so bitter, so cold and rough? He had always been the smoothest pebble in the pond, so to speak- calm and polite and soft everywhere, not a rough edge or unsightly bump of personality in sight. Society had seen to it that his manners were refined, his etiquette immaculate, his face always earnest, his words never rude or insensitive in any way. He refused to be the rough, abrasive rock at the edge of the water! That was always House's specific spot…for House had always been everything that Wilson was not.

Wilson had not seen hide nor hair of House since Amber had died and he was quite happy with that arrangement.

Yet what had become of him? He knew that he and House were on opposite ends of the manners pool. He would like to keep it that way, but he found himself floating toward the middle instead, like a child that could not swim clinging to an inner tube in the wave pool at the water park –he floated where the tide carried him. It was always the derelicts and troublemakers that floated to the deep end of the pool- was he one of them? Or did he just want to _be _one of them? Wilson realized, very suddenly, that he only ever stayed in the shallow end because he was afraid of the deep end- he knew who was there. By not being near the horrible people at the deep end of the pool, he had become one of them. It was a horrific, twisted fate. What if he and House simply switched lifestyles?

Wilson would rather kill himself first.

"In a rush…" Dr. Frist blinked slowly; like the great toad he was had just realized that he was standing among humans instead of in the swamp where he belonged. He scribbled fiercely on Wilson's patient file. _Patient shows disdain toward others._

Sure. Whatever.

"Tell me about Amber," Dr. Frist asked. He had asked Wilson this question thousands of times. His answer was never any different. What did it matter? He considered giving Dr. Frist a round of new questions to ask.

* * *

What is your favorite color?

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?

Summer, spring, fall, or winter?

What is one illness you never want to have?

There weren't very relevant, but they were very entertaining. They were also very easy to answer.

Blue was his favorite color. It was deep and calm and _nice_.

He would go to France- he didn't know why, but he suspected it had something to do with the French Riviera…

Spring. He liked how everything grew back and pretended that nothing had died over the winter.

A leg illness. Maybe it made him a hypocrite, maybe it made him a horrible person, but he didn't want to be anymore like House than he already was.

* * *

"Amber was great," he said. "She always knew what she wanted, and she made sure that everyone else knew, too. She was a very commanding figure. She.." He paused and swallowed heavily in an attempt to not cry. He only failed slightly; his eyes became very wet. "She was always in charge…she knew what to do and how to make you do it." He paused. Did she really? It was almost impossible to imagine someone harboring Amber's personality dying…because she _didn't _know how to do that and she _couldn't _make you do it. How lost was she when she died? The only moment she wasn't in control of anything…

And it was House's fault. It was the indisputable truth- it was House's fault. Who cared that he was drunk off his ass? _He _convinced Amber to take a drink- _he _was the reason she couldn't drive her own car. Wilson closed his eyes and refused to tell Dr. Frist anything else for the rest of the session.

He was quickly discovering the effect of blame on one's soul.

* * *

An hour later, Wilson was back at home, staring at the couch. He had dated everything according to its relation to Amber- this was pre-Amber, that was during Amber, and this was post-Amber. He didn't like anything that was post-Amber.

He decided to go to bed early. He had a fuzzy little headache brewing in the back of his head, the eye of the storm (or perhaps the source?) House. His entire head buzzed a cacophony of House, and Wilson wouldn't have it. He fell asleep on the couch in a second, praying that tonight he would dream of nothing but sweet, dear blackness.

Sadly, his mind would have none of it, and he met the girl for the first time that night.

* * *

_**So here it is.. yeah. Just do whatever. Thanks for reading.**_

**_Le Person_**


	4. Chickadee

_**Man! I've had, like, the longest period of hiatus ever! Sorry...I think I'm just unreliable or something! So yeah...the story continues...**_**_Don't own Wilson or Amber...R&R, maybe?_**

* * *

_There's a little creepy house  
In a little creepy place  
Little creepy town  
In a little creepy world  
Little creepy girl  
With her little creepy face  
Saying funny things that you have never heard_

_Kerli- Walking on Air_

* * *

Wilson was back in the country, the vast fields of corn enveloping and swallowing him in their sickly chartreuse stalks. He had never been here _per say_, but he had seen the field from the dirt path to the gleaming, benign river. It was adjacent to a vast apple orchard populated by granny smith apples and the tall, grinning trees the held them up to the sky in such a way that they sparkled like gems.

The corn stalks, however, seemed to be stiff, reedy twigs forced into the ground like bean poles. They swayed laboriously when the wind whined through them, and bent in long, thick curtsies when the wind blew harder. There were no ears of corn yet, which only exemplified the sheer ugliness of the plants. Who could grow such crops? They were dastardly and grotesque looking, hunched and hobbled over like peddlers in the streets, covered with thick sores reminiscent of leprosy, and yet they stood tall at times, reedy eyes gleaming, as they prepared for you to turn your back, because _all _of these plants were Brutus, if you really thought about it, and _he _was Caesar.

However, he was probably just paranoid. What else was he supposed to be when his dream was so realistic?

The river roared over the din of his thoughts and beckoned to him, waggling its damp fingers, coated in rings of rainbows, like a seductress. He had a strange feeling that he _wanted _to go to the river,yet he was wary of it. It was like an oyster to him; it seemed that he could open it and something magnificent would appear, but he never knew if the contents would be grit or treasure. He walked to the river anyway. The corn seemed too malevolent for him to stand safely in its midst.

Ferns once again grasped for his ankles and wrapped themselves about his legs, small witch's fingers begging for a soul to latch onto and destroy. The path twisted and swayed in front of him, a small ribbon of scattered rocks and stray plants that were trampled by passersby. He could hear the river crashing into the invisible force that existed around it; the hot, steamy stares of the corn singed into the nape of his neck. Chickadees sang muted lullabies in the upper branches of the trees as he wandered past them. He had been a Chickadee once, singing his own soft melody to the world that did not listen about the love that did not last while he sat in the perch that did not hold. He had been snatched from bliss by a screech owl from hell. When would the personal winged demons of these Chickadees come to tell them that their world was made of cheap lies?

A praying mantis glared at him with distended eyes. It stretched awkwardly over the space it covered, there but not seemingly present in the world around it, a pathetic creature with such a lowly life that it was refused a grasp on time or matter.

Wilson had been like that at Amber's funeral.

The long, scythe-like arms of the mantis loomed in the foreground of its vision. Its small, knobby head cocked to one side as it sized up the insect it was about to eat. Those long, spindly arms crossed and hovered for what felt like hours; its head did nothing but swivel back and forth, like a door knob.

It sprang, crushing the beetle and devouring it in seconds.

"You take so long to pray for forgiveness and understanding, yet you kill again so fast," Wilson stated sadly. Unknowingly, he had carried himself to the river's edge and sat by it.

"He prays not for forgiveness, nor for understanding. He prays for the safety of the soul he takes, for he knows that his is beyond saving," a voice whispered, reedy as the wind, behind him.

He did not turn around, for he somehow already knew that someone would be here today. Why not? It was about time he deluded himself further.

"That makes no sense," Wilson said. "Why give up completely? It is only in his nature to kill for survival."

"His whole survival has been a test. Will he kill himself or others? He knows he has failed and he has accepted that."

"People don't do that. They believe God is forgiving." His voice trembled. Was God forgiving toward Amber?

"People can't tell the truth, even to themselves. Maybe you can be forgiven, but animals aren't so optimistic. They get one chance, and they know that until they get a second chance."

"What if someone killed to protect themselves?"

"There are no gray lines," the voice said, shrugging off his statements with ragged tremors like a dog shakes off water.

"How do you know?" Suddenly, there was a woman in front of him, floating in the smallest branch of the tallest tree across from the river. The Chickadees flew off at her appearance, startled by a woman who could defy gravity and all that is comprehensible in the world.

She was neither beautiful nor ugly, but rather plain. Her hair, a natural menacing blond, was cut surprisingly short and framed her face like a picture frame. Her jaw was thinly set and curled into a permanent frame of nothingness. She felt nothing, and he could tell. How long had she been trapped here? She stared wistfully after the birds that had fled so willingly at the sight of her.

"I wish I could fly after them. That would be a breath of fresh air," she said, and Wilson knew, instantaneously, that there were no lines of gray because this woman had first hand experience being dead.

* * *

**_So yeah. That's it. Don't ask why I took so long to write it; I'm just pathetic. R&R?_**

_**LePerson**_


	5. Cracked

_

* * *

The faces all around me they don't smile,  
they just crack  
Waiting for our ship to come, but  
our ship's not coming back  
We do our time like pennies in a jar  
What are we saving for?_

_The Bravery- Believe_

_

* * *

  
_

Wilson would've probed for more, but the world began to fade as the woman- no older than 29- sighed inconsolably and stared after the birds, a wistful gleam alight in her eyes.

Dreams weren't an escape from reality, but reality served in a dash of different colors and flavors. If he had been forced to describe waking up from his dreams, Wilson would say that he was falling up – through the cracks in reality and out of the world that he had slipped into by mistake, like Alice down the rabbit hole, and back into the familiar and rather stale air of everyday life. The world lost its molding when he slept – up could only be identified as blue, green became down, and love shape-shifted into death.

* * *

Wilson awoke on his over-used couch, hair mussed and clothing askew. He could not shake the woman from his mind. Who was she? How did she die?

Why had he made her up?

* * *

Wilson's whole weekend had been marred by the girl. She had not returned to his dreams, that was for sure, but he had not had enough sleep to illicit any dreams. He got dressed, floated to his near-dilapidated car and drove to work as if he were a ghost. Wilson was returning to work after 2 months of grievance time, half-spent with his family, half-spent with Frist, and completely spent with himself as he sobbed quietly in his mind.

He had become a hermit during his grievance time, ignoring phone calls and kind gestures like they were made of acid. He straightened his tie – had to keep up _some _form of appearance for his coworkers – and walked into the hospital.

Cuddy greeted him first; a plastic grin adhered to her face. She had dressed immaculately for his return. Wilson glanced down at his own clothes and nearly frowned. He should have picked a nicer outfit. He flashed Cuddy a smile, hoping to imitate hers to the best of his abilities.

"How are you?" she asked, her face and voice guarded, as if he might snap in half at the question.

"Fine. Nice to be back. You?" Wilson rambled in clipped sentences, so he didn't have to strain to keep a smile in his voice. A smile sat on his face, but in reality, he was frowning; people could see not his mind, but his mask of skin and muscle. He was smiling somewhere.

Why did that not matter?

**

Wilson managed to hide in his office before more empty apologies and greetings drifted his way, and it wasn't until mid-afternoon that House came in.

He decided to take a quick nap on the couch around ten (he hardly got any sleep last night). He drifted into a quiet slumber at ten-o'-seven… He saw nothing but black until ten-thirty…

Then he saw the woman's face until he woke up.

* * *

She leaned over him, exuding a scent that was vaguely reminiscent of coffin liner and very nice perfume. She did not blink, or even move, but she stared. She stared the same way the sun stared until it made you blind, the same way shadows stared in the darkest part of the night, the same way strangers stared when they wanted nothing to do with you. Her stare hurt, like long spokes of fire drilled into his brain, like she had made his eyes freeze and she had no intentions of ever clearing away the ice.

It wasn't the fact that a dead woman was staring at him; it wasn't the fact that her eyes seemed numb; it wasn't her cold demeanor that made her that much more out of the ordinary and terrifying. It was all of the life vying for attention behind the hooded lids of her eyes and the films of her corneas that made her so surreal. She died young, she stayed young, and she left far too early. There wasn't a hint of tragedy about her face – but unreal optimism coiled behind her long lashes like a snake coiled in the grass – unseen, unheard, unnoticed, dangerous.

She did not inhale or exhale, but stood motionless, and he almost felt that he could blow her away, with the tiniest whiff or snuffle of a nostril, like a particle of dust. She seemed almost insignificant. He wanted to look away, _tried _to look away, but every time he made the attempt, her vivacious eyes stirred and the optimism uncoiled and her eyes seemed to die however much a dead person's eyes could die. He couldn't look away; it almost hurt to. He wanted to stare into her face forever and gaze at the constellations of her being like she was the night sky.

But dawn would some soon, so he could not waste his time.

* * *

**_GAH. Too much time not writing. Sorry. I fail EPICALLY. : ( _**

**_Whoops. R&R, if you're not SUPER MAD AT ME LIKE I AM._**

**_LEPERSON  
_**


	6. Morbid Red Flowers

_**Um...back after the world's longest hiatus. I basically spent the day reading bad!fic quotes, so this ended up rather crappy by comparison to others. I also kind of realized Wilson is incredibly OOC, but whatever. At least I'm posting. Don't own House MD, or Wilson, blah blah blah.**_

_**

* * *

**Old yellow bricks,  
Love's a risk,  
Quite the little Escapologist  
Looked so miffed,  
When you wished,  
For a thousand places better than this_

_Old Yellow Bricks – The Arctic Monkeys_

_

* * *

  
_

"Who are you?" he called out, voice hollow, broken, small with fear.

She did not respond, but merely continued to stare with a faraway, dissolved, subdued look that belonged to the most dreadfully lost of souls. She blinked, and wounds blossomed and died on her head like great, morbid red flowers, opening and closing like gaping blackened mouths.

"I..." he muttered, at a sudden loss for words as he scrambled away from the endless black holes twisting and writhing on her face. He slid off the couch in his bid for escape with a dull thump, rolling on the floor like a deflated rubber ball.

A wide grin cracked across her face like a fissure breaking in the earth, temporarily chasing off the head wounds. She leaned over him and he once again thought she appeared quite lovely, in a deadened sort of way. Her eyes appeared to get sucked back into reality (his reality, anyway), and her hair hung from her face in what appeared to be characteristically messy blond strands. The grin made her more comely, somehow, and he wondered if this was, in fact, the same menacing woman he had seen in the country.

The grin widened as he stared at her. She stuck out a hand in a genial, friendly manner, eyes not leaving him once.

"Don't hurt yourself," she laughed.

He did not extend a hand, or even move. "I…you…the river…" he stuttered wildly, eyes rolling around the room for some form of protection from her.

"Oh," she frowned, a creased look burying her previously gregarious-looking demeanor. She backed off a little, giving him space to sit up without being smothered by her. He sat, stared at her, confused by her conflicting personalities. What happened to the stony, threatening martyr from the river? She was surely not also this bright faced young girl with the sunny laugh and eager hand.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Oh."

She stared around his office for a moment and returned her gaze to him. "I didn't think you could see me…" her voice trailed off quietly.

"Of course I could see you!" Wilson exclaimed almost angrily. "Why wouldn't I be able to see you?"

Her face merely creased further, burying her features in old laugh lines. "You never noticed me before then."

"You were there _before?_ No, _no_, I would've seen you," he reasoned to himself quickly.

"You didn't notice anybody else," she replied pointedly, a small frown of disappointment working its way onto her face. "I actually think this is the first time a dreaming person has seen _anyone _next to that river."

"I-How many other people are there beside you?" Wilson thought of the potential masses of people watching him cry out in frustration at a _river _-- a _river _for God's sake – and was immediately appalled by it.

She shrugged. "It changes. So what's your name?" she queried casually, as if the previous topic of conversation was rather typical and stale.

"I'm not telling you my name! I don't even know who _you _are! I don't even know if you're _real_!"

She stared at him with her strangely hollow eyes, like a frozen pond with fish roaming beneath the crust of ice.

"If I'm real enough for you to hold a conversation with, doesn't that make me real enough?" she asked simply.

Wilson frowned.

"No. I've had conversations with pillows after long shifts. That doesn't make them animate objects," he replied.

"But that does make them _real_."

"_No, it doesn't_. I don't trust a schizophrenic's descriptions because _they aren't real_. I'm pretty sure _you're _not real! Talking to you is just making me crazier! I'm hallucinating! I've got dementia! Schizophrenia! _Something's _making me hallucinate! Maybe House…" He stopped talking at the mention of House's name.

"You don't like him much, I take it?"

"_No one _likes him much. I used to tolerate him, I guess."

She stared at him thoughtfully and said nothing. The wounds began to quiver open again; she looked like a grotesque, rotten flower.

"Well, I'm not inclined to speak if it won't help you realize anything. If I make you crazier, that won't do much good to anyone, I suppose."

Wilson frowned more intensely and stared at her; a challenging, stubborn aura stuck to his demeanor.

The wounds opened and closed, like doors; as if they were opportunities that he was missing. He noticed that they sealed themselves into white flaps of skin when she talked. It made him feel like she was locking him out of something.

"Go away," he muttered.

"I can't." The wounds closed, tiny sections of skin locking them shut.

* * *

The door slammed open and Wilson fell off the couch. He swiveled his head around frantically, looking for the girl.

A throat cleared in the doorway. Cuddy stood there, soft smile on her face.

"Wilson, I know you're tired, but I need some work done around this hospital! Maybe you're not up to seeing any of the cancer patients right now, but can you at least do some clinic duty?"

He nodded, swallowing a dry lump of foreboding that had been swelling in his throat since 10 that morning.

* * *

_**Finally posted, after MILLIONS OF YEARS OF FAIL TIME.**_

_**I didn't even really try on the last half of this. Sorry for the crap and the shortness.**_

_**Eh, if you don't hate me, then do whatever you want with it.**_

_**~Le Person  
**_


End file.
